They ran through the halls and out into the forested area toward the dock, but when they got there, they saw the clipper was being guarded by five Misarros.

“What do we do?” Agnes asked.

“I’ll distract them,” Bellamy said. Agnes hadn’t even noticed she had come with them. Her thoughts were all tangled up in that memory.

Bellamy touched Sera lightly on the arm. “Good luck,” she said. Then she ran out into the open. “The Renalt has come!” she cried. “Quickly, your mistress needs you!”

The Misarros jumped to attention, following Bellamy as she led them in the opposite direction and out of sight. Their group hurried to board the clipper, Eneas emerging from below.

“Can you sail this alone?” Leo asked Matthias.

“Not alone,” Vada said.

“I can sail,” Sera reminded him.

“Eneas can too,” Matthias said. “Quick, there’s no time to waste.”

“Has the Renalt truly come?” Eneas asked as Vada and Sera scrambled up the masts to release the sails.

“She has,” Matthias said. “And we’d best be getting out of here while my mother is distracted.”

Agnes leaned over the rail and called out, “Errol!”

The mertag’s head popped up as if he’d been waiting. His lights flashed anxious indigo and umber.

“It’s time, Errol,” she said. “Braxos. It’s time to go to Braxos.”

Errol snapped his teeth at her and a gust of wind caught the sails, pulling the ship out into the water and away from Culinnon. Agnes had one last fleeting thought of her father and her grandmother and everything she was leaving behind.

Then she turned around and set her sights on the horizon, on Braxos and all that waited there.

31

Sera

ONCE CULINNON WAS SAFELY OFF IN THE DISTANCE, SERA climbed down from the mast.

Errol was swimming alongside the clipper, his lights flashing excitedly when he saw her.

“Braxos, Sera Lighthaven! Off to Braxos at last,” he crowed.

Sera’s stomach flip-flopped. She was eager to reach the tether and return home, and yet she would miss her friends on this planet. She wished she could help the Arboreals and the mertags too, free them from Culinnon and Ambrosine Byrne. And she wanted to help heal the wounds between Leo and Agnes and their father. What she had seen inside Xavier’s memory only inspired pity—the sort of man he used to be, the sort of man he could be again.

Leo came up beside her, snaking one arm around her waist.

“Ready to go home?” he asked, and though his voice was steady, she felt his hand quiver.

She nuzzled into his shoulder. “We haven’t reached the island yet,” she reminded him. “It will not feel real until I see the tether with my own eyes.”